Some Nifty Niceties
Your Xfce desktop is great, but let's be real. It could always use a few more fantastic apps.
Baobab
As we use our devices, our files accumulate and take up greater space by time. Baobab helps you keep track of your disk usage and specifically identify how much space do your files and directories take.
If it’s not your type, I suggest taking a look at ncdu. It stands for NCurses Disk Usage, and is a counterpart that runs in a text-mode user interface.
Catfish
If you’re looking for something, chances are it’s best done with Catfish. It is a simple search utility powered by Python and GTK3.
All searches are done relative to the directory chose in the location selector. In the sidebar, you may filter and further narrow down your search. Under the settings view, you may choose which directories to exclude from your search.
Celluloid
If you’d like something simple for your media consumption needs, there is Celluloid. It is a simple GTK frontend for mpv. According to the project, it aims to be easy to use while maintaining high level of configurability.
It supports mpv configuration files as is. It supports playlists, MPRIS2, and loudness normalization. If you prefer using a GStreamer wrapper, I suggest looking at Parole.
File Roller
File Roller helps you manage your archives easily. It supports a wide range of file types such as, but not limited to .7z, .cab, .dmg, .jar, .tar, .zip, and .rar.
If you are not comfortable with its graphical interface, I suggest looking at Engrampa and Xarchiver.
GNOME Calculator
As you may have noticed, Xfce does not come with a graphical calculator, by default. GNOME Calculator does come in handy to fill that gap. It supports advanced, financial, and programming modes.
If you are uncomfortable with GNOME and libadwaita, I suggest mate-calc and qalculate as alternatives. You may also use the xcalc utility with the x11-apps or use widely available command-line utilities.
Micro
For your ample text editing needs, micro saves the day. It is a terminal-based editor, such as the likes of vim, nano and emacs. Despite being rather intimidating, it should be pretty easy to use given the mouse support and relatively sane keybind settings.
Micro supports greater customization through json and Lua if you’d like to configure the editor further. It also supports a full-blown plugin system powered by Lua.
Pika Backup
Pika lets you do backups the easy way. It allows you to create local and remote backups, as well as set an interval. According to the project, it is designed to save your personal data and does not support complete system recovery.
Timeshift
Timeshift is not a backup tool. See Pika.
Just to be on the safe side, you’d probably like to take a snapshot of your system in case anything goes wrong. Timeshift is the tool for that. It provides a functionality similar to the System Restore feature in Windows or the Time Machine tool in Mac OS.
You can use it to take incremental snapshots of your file system at regular intervals, which can then be restored later to undo all changes in the system.
Xfce4 Docklike Plugin
As you may have noticed, launchers and window buttons are separate in Xfce, unlike Cinnamon, GNOME, and KDE. This can easily be circumvented with xfce4-docklike-plugin. It supports pinning on dock, thumbnail previews, and forcing icon sizes.
Follow below instructions to install it on your system.
Ubuntu
1
2
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xubuntu-dev/extras
sudo apt update && sudo apt install xfce4-docklike-plugin
Fedora
1
sudo dnf install xfce4-docklike-plugin
Arch Linux
1
yay -S xfce4-docklike-plugin-git
Building from source
1
2
3
4
tar xvf xfce4-docklike-plugin-<version>.tar.xz && cd xfce4-docklike-plugin-<version>
meson setup build
meson compile -C build
sudo meson install -C build
Xfce4 Panel Profiles
The Xfce Panel is configurable to a great extent and it is nice to play around it.
xfce4-panel-profiles is a nifty tool to backup, restore, and set panel profiles in Xfce. This is accessible through the topmost view of Xfce’s panel preferences when installed. It allows you to save current panel configuration to local storage and export it. You may also import others’ panel profiles or go with a preset installed with the package.
Xfce4 Terminal
Xfce Terminal is a lightweight and easy to use terminal emulator application.
It has multi-tab and drop-down support. It is based on the Vte terminal widget library, which offers a well-developed base and excellent Unicode support. If you are experiencing problems with the terminal rendering speed, you may disable anti-aliasing for the terminal font.